Reviewed resources for teaching about climate and energy

This lesson focuses on the importance of ocean exploration as a way to learn how to capture, control, and distribute renewable ocean energy resources. Students begin by identifying ways the ocean can generate energy and then research one ocean energy source using the Internet. Finally, students build a Micro-Hydro Electric Generator.

In this video segment, two students discuss the greenhouse effect and visit with research scientists at Biosphere 2 in Arizona, who research the effects of global climate change on organisms in a controlled facility. Their current research (as of 2002) focuses on the response to increased quantities of CO2 in a number of different model ecosystems.

This series of activities introduce students to polar oceanography, polar climate and how events that occur in oceans thousands of kilometers away affect them and the mid-latitudes using maps, images, lab experiments and online data tools. Students explore how conditions are changing in the Polar Regions and the possible impacts upon life in the United States and other mid-latitude nations.

In this activity, students make a model sea floor sediment core using two types of buttons to represent fossil diatoms. They then compare the numbers of diatom fossils in the sediment at different depths to determine whether the seas were free of ice while the diatoms were alive.

This short series of lessons has multiple facets that may require several class periods to implement. Lessons explore the importance of engineering solutions to the management of climate change, by brainstorming ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in a form that does not promote global warming. Students can explore engineering careers and experience learning through the scientific process.

This NASA video provides an introduction to aerosols: their varied sources, brief lifetimes and erratic behavior. Also reviews the GLORY satellite and how it would have helped researchers determine the global distribution of aerosol particles by unraveling the microphysical and chemical properties of aerosols. GLORY failed to reach orbit in May, 2011.

A collection of repeat photography of glaciers from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The photos are taken years apart at or near the same location, illustrating how dramatically glacier positions can change even over a relatively short period in geological time: 60 to 100 years. Background essay and discussion questions are included.